So this is what happens when Ovechkin rips a slapper off your head

(DumpNChase)–During the Capitals’ off-day practice at Consol Energy Center in the Steel City, Hendricks suddenly and quite surprisingly began bleeding profusely from his right ear and the surrounding area. “We were in groups,” recalls Hendricks. “There’s a group taking some shots at one end, and we were out by the blueline working on our face-offs. [Alex Ovechkin] took a shot and missed the net a little high. It hit the glass and came out. We all know how hard he shoots; it ended up catching me in the ear. It wasn’t direct, but from what he says it was picking up speed on the glass.” It was direct enough. “It hit me and it was kind of surprising,” says Hendricks. “It felt like somebody came up and hit me in the head with a baseball bat. It stunned me. I realized I was bleeding and pain was setting in. I knew it wasn’t good. I was pretty upset. I was thinking of all the worst possible injuries I could have had and I was hoping that it wasn’t going to be that bad.” Hendricks saying he was pretty upset is a slight understatement. He barreled his way toward the bench, loudly hurling invective along the way. He crashed his way through the door to the Capitals’ bench, and thundered down the tunnel leading to the Washington locker room, leaving spatterings of carmine in his wake. “The immediate thing I did was to go to a mirror to see how bad it was,” Hendricks remembers. “It wasn’t a pretty sight, that’s for sure. The trainers – Ben [Reisz] and Greg [Smith] – they did a great job taking care of me right away. Hendricks’ right ear, before “It was pretty funny once the guys started coming off the ice. Their comments weren’t too comforting. They made it sound like it was a lot worse than it really was.” Again, a bit of an understatement on Hendricks’ part here. As the accompanying photo shows, the Ovechkin missile took a chunk out of Hendricks’ ear and also opened up a wound on the side of his head. Hendricks spent the afternoon being tended to by the Caps’ medical staff and a local plastic surgeon. The men combined forces to stop the bleeding and mend Hendricks’ right ear. “The Pens had a great plastic surgeon who came down to the rink and took good care of me,” says Hendricks. “He was able to stitch the cartilage back together and then stitch the ear back together as a whole. And then there are a few more stitches in the side of my head.”

That’s quite the raspberry Hendricks is sporting there. Gotta love hockey players. Like what were his teammates telling him that made it sound worse than it actually was? Umm…bro…your ear almost fell off. That’s pretty accurate, can’t imagine they were exaggerating anything beyond that…what tops your ear falling off?

Just another example proving that hockey players are the toughest people on the planet. Can you imagine how long an NBA player would sit out with this injury? Hell, I bet if Vince Carter even looks at this picture he’d retire from sports all together.